Australian election 2022: Socialists and Greens target Labor in Wills

The Socialists say they want to “Reshape human society” during a heated election debate with the Greens and Labor in Coburg.

Candidates for the federal seat of Wills traded barbs over who had the best climate credentials at the Coburg Uniting Church on Tuesday night. Picture: Moreland City Council.

Local socialist candidates called for the nationalisation of Australia’s energy market and The Greens went on the attack over fossil fuel donations in a spirited town hall debate between candidates for the seat of Wills.

In the debate, held at the Coburg Uniting o Tuesday night, organised by local activist group Climate Action Moreland, Greens candidate Sarah Jefford criticised the Labor Party for receiving more than $4m in political donations from fossil fuel companies in the past 10 years.

“Being a bit better (than the Coalition) is not good enough,” Ms Jefford, a mother and surrogacy lawyer living in Pascoe Vale, told the debate.

But incumbent member Peter Khalil, who has held the safe Labor seat since 2016, told the audience “it takes a party to form government” to have an effect on climate change.

“Labor is only party that can form a government,” Mr Khalil said.

He said that as the local member he had promised $5m for the Moonee Ponds Creek and $500,000 for the Merri Creek, while Labor had agreed to fund 10,000 clean energy apprenticeships and employ more than 3800 Indigenous rangers.

Victorian Socialists candidate Emma Black, a local teacher and unionist, said she considered climate change to be a “class issue” and one that was insoluble without the nationalisation of the Australian energy market.

Ms Black told the audience it was the intention of the Victorian Socialists to impose an immediate moratorium on all coal and gas projects, a policy also supported by the Greens, as well as “massively increasing” taxes on the rich.

Later in the debate she said it was unlikely agriculture could be sustainable so long as it remained riven by market forces, and said in her introduction that it was the Victorian Socialists aim to “reshape” human society in accordance with the principles of socialism.

Sue Bolton, candidate for Socialist Alliance and a long-serving Moreland councillor, agreed with Ms Black that Australia’s energy market needed to be nationalised.

“(The energy market) needs to be taken over and controlled by the public,” Ms Bolton, who has worked as a bus driver and a public servant, said.

Ms Bolton said summer sports in Moreland were already being impacted by extreme heat and climate change, and emphasised her local credentials by telling the audience she had been a long-term campaigner to get Moreland off fossil fuels.

Leah Horsfall, the local candidate for the Animal Justice Party, told the audience that industrial animal agriculture had more sever effects on climate change than mining.

Ms Horsfall, a teacher, said that methane from Australia’s nearly 100 million sheep and cows was more deleterious for the nation’s carbon footprint than coal and gas combined.

She said that 90 per cent of Australian deforestation is due to industrial animal agriculture.

Tom Wright, the Liberal candidate for Wills, was an apology.